Sneaking Bliss with Mary A Livingston

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Animal Attraction

As I sat down to paint this morning, movement in the field on the other side of the pond caught my attention. The distance, about 250 yards, from the window was a bit far for a nice shot. Tim and I quietly slipped around the south side of the dam, then belly crawled to get within 100 yards. This nice black-tailed buck in rut was watching a doe by one of the lower ponds.

The doe he was fixated on. She is pretty, can you blame him?

The buck stares longingly at the doe. He did not notice us at all.

We must have been a sight, laying on our bellies, in the rain soaked grass, stalking the deer for a photo. The buck did not notice us at all. He was captivated by her scent. She was nervous, people crawling through the grass and taking aim her way was more than she could stand. She bolted up the hill and over the ridge with him in hot pursuit.

you say it must have been a sight … I say totally romantic to be crawling on your belly with your husband through the grass watching this beautiful scene. Hope you got to sneak a kiss or two with your fellow. haha.

I am new to your blog having subscribed to your husband’s for maybe a month or longer. The photos are so good. I like those kind of scenes a lot. Beautiful deer. I noticed the huge decidous trees on the ridge. So wonderful that you have those old trees. They would be great in a painting.

The blue oaks on the ridge are stunted due to shallow soils from underlying hard-pan. They are probably older than they look. They had a good acorn crop this year. The deer are feeding regularly. Perhaps we will have a chance to get some more shots.

I didn’t know those are called blue oak. There are several kinds of oak growing here in central Texas. The oaks are always such good trees. Mighty as an oak or something to that effect was in a poem, way back when. Or maybe it is just a saying. Either way, so maybe you can plan to set up a small portable hut of some kind and let the deer get used to seeing it. Then try to get in before the deer come to eat the acorns. Those would be really good photos. We have the white-tail deer in my area but going to west Texas the mule deer are plentiful.

Speaking of acorn crop and that your trees produced good ones- so did the oaks and pecans where I live. Must have been a good acorn year in lots of places. I fed some of the live oak acorns to my old goat. (he’s about 10 or so now)

In California we have natives blue oak, valley oak, white oak, black oak, canyon live oak, brewer oak, interior live oak, Oregon white oak, I am sure there are more, but can’t think of them off the top of The Forester’s head. LOL (I started listing trees and he chimed in.)
Our crops vary with elevation. At the higher elevation where we hunt, the crops were so, so this year.

Mercy- there are many oaks where you live. There are a number of oaks in my area and maybe I’ll write about those someday.

Since Tim knows all of those trees he should get some pics of the different kinds and post those on his blog. I would really love seeing the different kinds of trees and where they grow with descriptions.

So do you hunt the black-tailed deer? My husband was a died in the wool outdoors man and hunter but I never wanted to hunt- just can not do it. My son is a bow hunter but he has not really tired to hunt this year. I wish that he would hunt with a camera but as long as he eats or gives away the game I okay with that.

Mary, look in the nature category and IF YOU HAE TIME read the View From the Highway. I wrote a bit about the canned hunts that are set up not too far from where I live. Some of my best comments (not that many) were about that post.